Two voices: the polished and the persistent
Politics
HIS MASTERS VOICE. The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard.
By David Marr. Quarterly Essay by Black Inc. 106 pp. $14.95
HOWARD’S SEDUCTION OF AUSTRALIA. Where to Now?
By Mike Clancy. Fast Books. 149 pp $24.00
Reviewer: Andrew Fraser
On June 14, John Howard was having fun in Parliament as he fended off questions about that Claytons fundraiser at Kirribilli House. He drew on a book entitled The fixer: The untold Story of Graham Richardson, by Marian Wilkinson.
Wilkinson, the Prime Minister informed a breathless nation, “is hardly a journalistic promoter of John Howard, to put it mildly”.
But there was more. “I think she almost competes with David Marr–no, not quite–as somebody who is fairly uncharitable to the current Prime Minister” he said.
This is the handicap of Marr’s ever-elegant essay, His Masters Voice, starts under. No matter how well evidenced his piece is–and it is– he will always be seen as one of the usual suspects: a Howard hater.
Cleanskin Mike Clancy comes to basically all the same conclusions in Howard’s Seduction of Australia, with a different folder of evidence and without the flourish of the multi-Walkley-Award winning journalist and author.
The great strength of Marr’s essay is its detail, particularly on the Sydney raids on the G20 protesters, where he talks to those involved, garnering dreadful accounts of harassment and assults by police. His disposal of Howard Government book-banning is clinical, detailing Attorney-General Philip Ruddock’s successful appeal to get texts by the late Sheik Abdullah Azzam banned, one “because it promotes and incites in matters of crime, specifically terrorism” and another “because it was a real and genuine call to specific action by Muslims to fight for Allah and engage in acts of violence”.
Marr concludes neatly: “The books are old–both were written during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan–and nothing in the worst passages of either would surprise anyone who has read newspaper accounts of suicide bombings in the last half-dozen years.”
It is compelling stuff, even if we always know where it is going to end up: Howard, PM, runs a profitable little corner shop of a country – “Out the back is a mess, but the shop is as neat as a pin. The Prime Minister is on the footpath with a starched white apron. We’re open for business and that’s what matters.”
While Marr’s essay rattles as a read, Clancy’s contribution is absorbing also, if much more scattergun. The former community sector worker, who ran one of the country’s early internet businesses, sold up a year ago and has devoted most of the past 12 months to his pet project. It brings some different perspectives, especially his fears of the looming shadow of “American-style capitalism” over Howard’s Australia.
His book is highly segmented and, amid an almost evangelical tone at times, there are some pithy observations, none better drawn than his contention that terror is better fought as a police operation than as a war, evidenced by our cooperation with Indonesia, Nine Bali Bombers have been jailed. Osama bin Laden is at large.
His inclusion of the US Free Trade Agreement under his “Border Security” chapter is cheeky, but he makes the case soundly.
At other points, Clancy’s book is a bit strained, talking of US “world domination’ and affording some think-tanks and journalists more influence than this writer has ever perceived. His case against ‘noisemakers’ such as Piers Akerman, Christopher Pearson and Andrew Bolt is undermined by his constant attempt to hold them accountable for standards of ‘journalism”. While many might quibble with the prominence their publishers give them (not just pure column inches, but also to the exclusion or minimization of other voices), they are commentators, and are clearly flagged as such.
Clancy’s arguments against Howard’s economic management are made at length, outlining a growing rich-poor divide, which the Prime Minister has been able to counter with Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing he has presided over a ‘deliberate redistribution’ of wealth to lower- income earners. Clancy’s investigation of corporate links of many senior Bush administration appointees is more convincing. He concludes with a call for a Royal Commission into Australian democracy/capitalism and a call-to-arms chapter on What to Do, a 16 page manual on what we should read and how we should agitate and organize. All fair enough if a tad repetative.
While some of us may want a bit of a counter-case made in both books (which most often only goes to strengthen the author’s major contention anyway), the polished Marr and the persistent Clancy are both worth picking up in this election year.
Canberra Times, Panorama, p 14, 23 June 2007.
Mike Clancy’s Response
I am flattered to be included in a review along with the extraordinary David Marr.
However, while some of this reviewer’s points seem fair comment, several of his claims are factually wrong.
He claims: “Clancy’s arguments against Howard’s economic management are made at length, outlining a growing rich-poor divide.” Not so. He claims: “He concludes with a call for a Royal Commission into Australian democracy/capitalism.” Not so.
The book differentiates itself from the writing of the traditional Left in that I do not attack Howard ‘at length’ for the reviewer’s alleged ‘growing rich-poor divide’. Instead, the book focuses on areas where Howard has weakened our democracy.
The book also differentiates itself from the old-style Left by not attacking capitalism. In fact it provides a strong argument in favour the traditional Australian style of democratic capitalism which it contrasts with the current corrupt American style of capitalism.
The book differentiates itself from most other publications by not only highlighting specific problems with our democracy, but suggesting how they might be fixed, through a Royal Commission into those areas where our democratic system is failing.
Like so much of the media, this reviewer seems to bring to the task a Left/Right template. This assumes that if someone is critical of John Howard, they must be Left. If someone is Left, they must be anti-capitalist and be protesting the rich-poor divide in this country.
Howard’s Seduction needs to be read more carefully, without the baggage of the old Left/Right framework.
Mike